Category Archives: Arsenal Analysis

Europe and the American death penalty

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death-penaltyTypically, the only countries that try to tell the United States what to do are in the company of North Korea and Venezuela.

Europe definitely doesn’t make a habit of condemning the policies of the U.S. government and certainly not the policies of specific state governments. Part of that is that it would be unlikely to accomplish much. Part of it is a recognition that they would not like the U.S., a peer nation among developed democracies, telling them what to do at home, either.

They may disagree privately or shake their heads, but it’s rare for European leaders to say anything in an official capacity or to do anything substantive about it. This may be changing a bit in light of the NSA scandals, but there’s also actually already been one fairly quiet exception: the U.S. death penalty. They’ve been very firm on the issue and are increasingly ramping up official activism to end it.
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An end to Spanish universal jurisdiction?

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The Spanish parliament has decided to consider a bill to limit “universal jurisdiction” currently granted to Spanish courts. This means that Spanish judges would no longer be able to rule on human rights violations not directly concerning Spain, an unusual power they currently hold and have used. The move comes immediately after a decision by a Spanish judge to pursue the arrest of China’s former president Jiang Zemin, as well as other officials, over human rights violations in Tibet.
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Clay Aiken (D) will challenge NC Republican Congresswoman

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clay-aiken-2011-flickr-TimmyGUNZClay Aiken, American Idol season 2 runner-up and a very successful singer, of Raleigh, North Carolina is throwing his hat into the political ring as a Democrat in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. A lot of the articles I’ve seen have either failed to provide any context whatsoever or have written him off completely without much detail. So, I aim to remedy that here.

If nominated — he has to get past two other Democrats first in the May primary — Aiken would likely be challenging incumbent two-term Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers — known best for justifying Congress being paid during last year’s shutdown, saying “I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line.” She’s also the Republican Women’s Policy Committee chairwoman.

Ellmers already faces a primary challenge, from the right, from a local right-wing radio host. She seems personally offended that Aiken is also daring to run against her and was quite mocking of him during a recent interview (audio).

Aiken plans to emphasize education (they’re trying to highlight past work in special education, but I’m not sure he actually spent a whole lot of time doing that), as well as job-creation and the usual stuff. He will come into the race with a lot of potential for self-funding (assuming his earnings haven’t dropped too dramatically in just the last couple years) and very high name recognition. In terms of the big picture for the U.S. House, Democrats would probably love to recapture that district, which — before it was redrawn — had once been historically black and was only lost to Ellmers in 2010 by fewer than 2,000 votes. Barack Obama won the old district in 2008 (but would have lost it heavily to McCain under the new lines).

That being said, the NC 2nd is a district that was drastically redrawn by the Republican legislature after 2010, to be a low-income and heavily white district with a 50-50 urban rural split. It has a 10 point Republican voter lean in the 2013 Cook PVI ratings, though it may be that those Republicans are more solid than the previous version of the district, since it was actually slightly more Republican on paper when it was held by Democratic Bob Rep. Etheridge. In the 2012 presidential election, it voted for Mitt Romney by 18 points.

So, it will be an uphill battle for any Democrat there, even without considering that it would be a midterm race (lower turnout) and that Aiken is openly gay in a state that just voted in 2012 to ban any legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Ellmers, while unpopular nationally as a person (her shutdown comments are the tip of an unpleasant iceberg), is a solid conservative in a new district that voted to re-elect her last time by a margin of over 45,000 votes or 15 points. But it’s probably worth noting that Mitt Romney outperformed her in the same election when her Democratic opponent in 2012 didn’t have much name recognition, which may demonstrate some vulnerability. Even so, it’s still a decisive result that will made it a challenge for any Democrat — even for someone like Aiken who could probably assemble a reasonably credible campaign.

Political bullying: Why Christie and LBJ aren’t at all the same

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Leaving aside the obvious way they aren’t at all the same — President and Senator Lyndon Johnson was a statesman while Governor Chris Christie most certainly is not — I found this distinction by Michael Zuckerman in The Atlantic to be particularly compelling and important to understand: “Americans may admire a politician who can play hardball, but it matters whether his victim is a political opponent or an innocent citizen.”

Now, with the caveat (which Zuckerman acknowledges too) that Congressman Johnson was definitely not a statesman and his election campaigns to the U.S. Senate included not just bullying but outright ballot-box stuffing, and keeping in mind Johnson’s advocacy for some unsavory policies along the way, on balance Johnson is most notable, in terms of results achieved, for his bullying of other Senators and members of Congress into accepting civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, anti-poverty programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and much more. These helped millions and continue to do so today.

In general, Gov. Christie’s bullying has been of average people — including citizens asking reasonable questions at town hall meetings — and of far less powerful politicians in the state who aren’t really blocking him from achieving policy goals but are just insufficiently supportive of him personally. That’s not helping people. And his staff certainly hurt a lot of ordinary people (via hurricane relief withholding and bridge closures) in their quest to bully the mayors of Fort Lee and Hoboken for failing to support Christie’s re-election bid in a timely manner.

More from Zuckerman:

Many politicians accept the slings and arrows of the game because they accept the basic Machiavellian premise: “not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good,” as philosopher-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff has argued, “but also that they shouldn’t worry about it.” It’s the recognition that the political space is one of conflict, and one where morality is limited in some ways.

Even so, morality is not—and never should be—absent from the equation: The key stipulation, which Machiavelli took seriously, is “in the name of the public good.” In other words: You may have to do ruthless things to your political opponents, but you do those things because they help your constituents. It matters, in politics, who benefits.

Such is the case with LBJ’s strong-arm tactics. Yes, he deceived, threatened, and browbeat colleagues—”That man will twist your arm off at the shoulder and beat your head in with it,” Dixiecrat Senator Richard Russell, a staunch opponent of civil rights, famously observed. But we are, rightly, most tempted to forgive LBJ these trespasses when he undertook them on behalf of his constituents, especially disenfranchised black people in the South and poor people across America—when he was bullying, you might say, for a cause.

 
Americans crave a strong executive who gets things done. We’re a people of action who created a system designed to accomplish little, slowly. But Christie is doing it wrong.

A brief history of the Greek debt coverup

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The problem with not giving anyone central monetary control of a shared currency is that it can become very chaotic and disorganized if everyone is pursuing contradictory fiscal policy at the national level. To avoid this, when the Eurozone was being designed, members agreed that they would have to meet certain deficit and debt targets — keeping the budget deficit (amount spent more than collected) below a certain ratio for a few years — to join and then even below that initial target every year after becoming members.

(Sidebar: The major downside to this strategy is that the economies and parliaments remain separate despite sharing a currency, yet they can’t respond to specific economic conditions in their own countries without violating their deficit and debt targets. This extends recessions in some places, even as other members of the Eurozone continue to do well.)

By 1998, eleven countries had met their targets for joining the Eurozone. Greece was not one of them.

As of 1999, when the currency virtually launched for trading purposes but not ordinary people, Greece had still not met their target to join the Eurozone when it would launch on paper a few years later. In large part, this resulted less from generous social spending and pensions and more from Greece’s chronic inability to collect tax revenues from its citizens – one of the most tax-evading populations in the world.

They were also five years away from hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics, which they had been awarded in 1997. The games had run into huge budget problems and cost overruns, which the government (as a matter of national pride, being Greece) had to help manage. They needed to take on even more debt to pull off the games, which was the opposite of what they needed to join the Eurozone before currency began circulating.

US Investment Bank Goldman Sachs came up with some very elaborate and expensive schemes (see this detailed video explanation of the mechanics from the BBC), which essentially allowed Greece to get the money it needed, while hiding how big their debt (and yearly deficits) had become. This scam allowed Greece to join the Eurozone in 2001, while it was still in its virtual stage, in time to participate when the physical currency launched in January 2002.

greek-euro-10-acropolisOutside observers started exposing the Goldman scam in 2003, and Greek government officials (from a new cabinet) revealed the deal in 2005, but EU regulators essentially pretended it had never happened until well after the crisis hit in 2009 (and continued to deny prior knowledge of it).

Meanwhile, Greece’s already bad debt situation was exploding from 2000 to 2008, as a direct result of the terms of the deal.

In a sense, like so many American homeowners before the end of 2007, Greece was given subprime loans it couldn’t possibly repay. Regulators and monetary authorities failed to perform due diligence ahead of the accession of Greece to the eurozone and then ignored the escalating danger as long as the rest of the global and European economy was doing fine. They only stepped in after the house of cards collapsed and then demanded round after round of budget cuts and other measures that hurt average Greeks who had nothing to do with the bad debt decisions that the rest of the Eurozone should have stepped in to prevent years earlier.

Greece played a part in setting up its own crisis, but the bigger picture is that Greece was failed by its peers and partners in the monetary union, and it was failed by abusive and manipulative lenders, who preyed upon a desperate government and gave them loans it never should have received in the first place.

Ukraine’s decision point

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Protests in Ukraine, active since November, have turned increasingly violent this past week in the face of government crackdowns. As I’ve argued before on this blog, while the Ukraine/EU/Russia triangle is a highly complex and multifaceted problem, a lot of the present crisis ultimately ties back to and derives from Ukraine’s unwillingness to deal seriously with its huge divide between its ethnically Ukrainian population and its ethnically Russian population. No matter which one is in charge, the other is upset and ready to protest.

Yes ethnically Ukrainian protesters should have a right to express themselves peacefully and freely. Yes the current ethnically Russian-led government should be able to enact some major policies its base supports, assuming they don’t oppress the other side or restrict freedoms by group. But the protesters and elected officials — who are mutually antagonizing each other into ratcheting up the stakes and responses — all need to realize that the state should accommodate the interests and acknowledge the views of all its citizens, including both those who elected the ruling party and those who did not.

That means the ruling party sometimes watering down policies more than its base would like (to protect the other side from abuses) and the opposition sometimes accepting that policies will be enacted even if they don’t agree with that course (because sometimes the majority has to get its way).

There has to be a unified, national identity to make the country function and cohabitate peacefully in the long run. It can’t always be about trying to impose the will of one group on the other group or resisting the winning party’s agenda at all costs.

And in turn, however, the West needs to step up to the plate and stop hovering anxiously as if they have no role or influence. They can put pressure on Russia to stop pressuring/intimidating the Ukrainian leadership and its eastern, ethnically Russian population.

They can also reiterate to the pro-Western protesters (and the pro-Russian government for that matter) that there’s a middle ground between never getting your way and getting your way by any means necessary. To be part of the European project, those protesters can’t light the country on fire. That doesn’t fly in liberal-democratic communities. Sometimes you have to be willing to allow for differences of opinions and policy — such as whether to form trade partnerships with Russia versus with the EU — without taking to the streets and brawling with the police.

Right now, Ukraine is standing at a decision point about what kind of a country it wants to be, both politically and as a people. It’s a dangerous moment because the West is dithering and refusing to take action or speak up seriously. It’s time for a public expression of the nuances that come with liberal democracy… as well as a reminder that a unified nationalism, divorced from ethnic divides, will be necessary to make Ukraine work.

Building a nation and a true liberal democracy is tough stuff. There are no easy solutions here. Both sides are intensifying the situation and responding inappropriately (and would likely do the same if power roles were reversed). Everyone needs to step back now and figure out if this path is the one they really want to go down. There has to be something that can bring everyone together as one nation, without regard to language or ethnic differences.

For more discussion, listen to our most recent radio episode, “Arsenal for Democracy 70 – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Christie.”

1 felony count, ahahah, 2 felony counts, ahahah …

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Bob-McDonnell-by-Gage_SkidmoreLess than two weeks after turning over the keys to the governor’s mansion, Republican former Virginia Governor and presidential once-hopeful Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted by a Federal grand jury on 14 felony counts.

They somehow managed to run afoul of the (Federal) law, despite their own state’s virtually non-existent ethics laws. Their crimes generally all relate to a scandal involving accepting — or rather actively soliciting — huge gifts from a political donor so the McDonnells could continue living the high life even after their investment portfolio collapsed.

They hadn’t even taken office before the shenanigans began (despite repeated warnings from staffers), and they likely wouldn’t have even gotten charged with anything if they had just disclosed it, but they knew it was too politically damaging to admit.

So, charged they were — and how.

…former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and his wife Maureen were indicted on 14 felony charges on Tuesday. The indictments centered around tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts received by the couple from a wealthy tobacco executive.

In what Republican state legislator Bob Marshall called the “type of activity” that “undermines public confidence,” McDonnell and his family allegedly accepted more than $135,000 in gifts and/or loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the then-CEO of Star Scientific Inc. The McDonnells then helped promote the scientifically-unproven dietary supplements line made by thecontroversial tobacco company-turned-supplements manufacturer. While Virginia’s lax gifts law allows elected officials to accept unlimited gifts — even from lobbyists and those with business before the state — McDonnell apparently failed to fully disclose what he and his wife received.

The gifts included a silver Rolex watch, golf clubs, Louis Vitton shoes, and $15,000 to help pay for the McDonnells’ daughter’s wedding. According to the indictment, the former governor and his wife conspired to commit wire fraud to accept bribes, knowingly made false statements on loan applications to avoid reporting the Williams loans, and obstructed justice.

 
Great job to the Washington Post for pushing relentlessly to expose this story. And now — since this is one of those scandals that probably didn’t really truly hurt anyone — the fun begins, particularly because Bob McDonnell was not well liked by much of the nation for his (and his party’s legislative members’) support for aggressive counter-abortion laws, such as the proposed mandatory, highly invasive early ultrasound.

From the trolling Brits on the other side of the Atlantic — who had their own major gifts/expenses scandal a few years ago, involving many members of parliament — comes this delightful take (The Guardian):

This Oscar de la Renta dress costs $12,590, which is just a fraction of the $140,805.46 in luxury gifts federal authorities say former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, took from a wealthy businessman.

We tried to online shop our way to the $140,000 mark, but we fell short.

 

We also learned all kinds of crazy (alleged) things about the McDonnells in the text of the indictment. Top line version below, details within:

1. It All Started With An Inauguration Dress
2. The McDonnells Were Deeply In Debt
3. Bob McDonnell Allegedly Knew About The First Big Loan From Williams
4. But Some Of Williams’ Help May Have Come As A Surprise
5. Bob McDonnell Asked For $20,000 Via A Text Message
6. People Discussed Using [State] Employees As Dietary [Supplement] Guinea Pigs
7. Bob McDonnell Told Virginia Officials That He Took Anatabloc
8. Maureen McDonnell Allegedly Lied To Law Enforcement

 

The Feds were even willing to offer an extremely generous — perhaps overly so — deal to former Gov. McDonnell that would have protected his wife entirely, even though she seems to have orchestrated much of the corruption and solicitations. All he had to do was plead guilty to one felony count and serve time (probably very little considering who he is). Yet he said no.

All I know is this:
I love it when a Virginia Republican scandal comes together.

Oh, and a word to the wise for successor Governor Terry McAuliffe: Given your own shady ethics, don’t forget to declare the gift you received from the McDonnells when they left.

 

For our initial coverage of the scandal in July 2013, listen to AFD Episode 50 – Ethics, Efficacy, Insurance.